Berkshires arts reviews

July 21, 2007 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

In “Blue/ Orange”, a three character all male play set in a British psychiatric hospital, playwright Joe Penhall gives us a penetrating look at social problems America also faces, without any real answers, today.

Malcolm Ingram, Le Roy McClain, and Jason Asprey in Blue/Orange at Shakespeare and Company, photo Kevin Sprague.

Now playing on the stage at the Shakespeare and Co. Founders’ Theatre in repertory, it fortunately will be around until September 7 and is definitely a contender for one of the best contemporary plays of the Berkshire summer season.

Director Timothy Douglas was fortunate in having Jason Asprey and Malcolm Ingram, both former Brits, equity actors, and long-time members of the Shakespeare and Co. family on hand and to find that Le Roy McClain, another Brit but a newcomer to the Lenox group, had encountered and played the third role a few years ago while studying at Yale.

He thus achieved perfect casting of three seasoned performers, all with the right accents and each the right age, and for this play in which race is an issue, the right skin color.

For race raises an ugly head and the word “nigger” raises issues and concerns almost as strong as those about the conditions in too many mental institutions—in America as well as in England.

The plot begins on the day before a young black man, Chrstopher is to be released from the hospital in which he has spent 27 of the 28 days permitted for assessment. He has been admitted for causing rowdy disturbances at the street fruit market where he worked, and in the hospital he still maintains that oranges are blue, that he is the son of Idi Amin, and that, when released, he will go back to Africa.

Robert, dynamically played by Jason Asprey, is the young doctor who has been treating Christopher and who is convinced that releasing him would a grave mistake since he believes him to schizophrenic and in need of further care. His decision is challenged by his mentor Bruce (Ingram) who is his bureaucratic superior and whom Robert feels is motivated too strongly by his desire to free up a bed in an over-crowded facility.

The play begins amiably –at least seemingly so, but the difference soon escalates into anger, and Robert feels, betrayal. Christopher, caught in the middle is bewildered into wanting to go and wanting to stay and still insists that oranges are blue.

Nothing is solved in a satisfactory manner. The problem is too big. Career motives impinge. Robert feels the betrayed by his superior strongly, and his hurt, anger, and rebuttal are presented near the play’s end (in which neither medical nor social issues are solved) in a diatribe of anger which brings out all Asprey’s considerable acting skills.

Ingram is magnificent too. At first calmly reasonable, he can be cruel and resourceful and win in his own way—for whatever the winning is worth.

McClain is convincing in his bewilderment, his changing demeanor, his changing stories, and his repeated involvement with the bowl of oranges that is one of the play’s few props. He is at times hostile, at times confused, at all times the problem that cannot be easily solved by the play.

Except for lights and sound at strategic moments, the three fine actors in this fine play appear before us on an almost bare stage. That they hold one’s rapt attention for the two hours (with intermission) that involve relatively little action is a tribute to their skill.

Incidentally, all three of these actors, on nights when Blue/Orange is not scheduled, are busily and hilariously appearing in Stoppard’s “Rough Crossing” also running all summer. If you are interested in seeing just how fine these actors are, I suggest you take in both plays and see for yourself. You should be very glad you did.

You might also want to schedule a trip to the Rose Footprint Theatre where on August 16 at 5:45, Yale University Drama professor and theatre historian David Krasner will discuss racial madness and “Blue Orange.”. It’s a part of the Bankside Humanities Series and is free.

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